This was an idea I had for a story about two years ago, but I didn't like the way it turned out, so I've since decided to rewrite it and try again. Last time, I think the tone just didn't jive well with the plot of the story and it was a real short coming. It made the whole thing rather lack cohesion, so this is take two with a very different tone.

Please please please let me know what you think, good or bad, because I'm unsure if it's turned out better this time.

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November 2014

Steve Rogers had only cried four times in his life. The first time had been when his mother died. For as long as Steve could remember, she had worked in a nursing ward treating tuberculosis patients. Helping those who couldn't help themselves, she used to say. Even after she contracted the disease, she tried to help those who stood a better chance than herself. It was Bucky who'd been the one to give him the news when she died, and he cried. How long, he couldn't remember; but he remembered picking himself up and putting on a brave face. He remembered walking to the funeral and smiling pleasantly as he shook hands with those who wished him well. He remembered pretending to be fine until eventually he was.

The second time was worse. When Bucky died, or when he thought he'd died. Unlike his mother, Steve had watched Bucky go. He'd been so close. A second more and he could have saved him. An inch longer reach and Bucky would have been fine. His mother died of disease, but Bucky died under His command, in His unit, on His mission, before His very eyes. Steve blamed himself for a very long time. Part of him still did. His crying over Bucky hadn't truly stopped until he plunged into the ice. There was no pretending to be fine when you watched your best friend die, when you were constantly thinking of all the things you could have done to save him.

The third time he'd cried was when they pulled him out of the ice. When they'd thawed him out and introduced him to this new world, this new future, and he realized just how much more he had to lose. He thought he'd lost everything the day he'd lost Bucky, but clearly he'd been wrong. Nick Fury had given him a brief rundown of the last seventy years that lasted all of thirty minutes before dropping him off in an apartment across town. The moment the door closed and he found himself alone, Steve collapsed into sobs. Everyone he'd ever known was dead; everything he'd ever known was gone. He was truly, truly alone. He had nothing and no one.

At least, that's what he'd thought. The fourth time Steve cried was when he realized that was wrong. The night after he'd ripped off the Winter Soldier's mask and seen his old friend. The night after the Winter Soldier had asked him, "Who's Bucky?". It was like losing him all over again. It was like losing everything all over again.

No, it was worse. Before that moment, Steve had no one, nothing. He had no hope, and he was forced to move on. Now, there was something. He was clinging to it like it was his lifeline, and though it may never float he would sink or swim with this one idea. Some part of his past, some part of Bucky, was alive, and he was going to find it or die trying.

"Cap," Sam interrupted the soldier's train of thought, joining the soldier in the living room. His tone was hesitant, probing. "You okay?"

Steve chuckled, still a little dazed. "Do I look okay?"

"No," Sam dropped down into a plush armchair across from Steve and leaned forward on his knees. "You look like hell, which is still probably twice as good as you're feeling."

Steve's gaze fell to the floor. Sam was right; he felt awful. He didn't sleep; he didn't eat. Most days, Steve felt like he didn't really breath either. It wasn't just the physical exhaustion. It was the sheer emotional desperation. Steve was feeling utterly useless, yet he wouldn't stop. He couldn't stop. Even if all hope was lost, Steve had to keep searching. They could have laid Bucky's dead body at his feet, and Steve would have stepped over it with a simple "I thought he was dead once" and kept looking. Bucky never gave up on Steve, and Steve would never give up on Bucky. If he gave up on Bucky, he might as well give up on everything.

"Hey," Sam leaned forward and clapped the Captain firmly on the shoulder. "We knew this wasn't going to be easy. We just have to keep trying."

Sam definitely understood, more than most. He knew the lengths he himself would go to if he found out Riley was still alive. They hadn't even reached that point yet. Let alone what Sam imagined if he added in childhood best friends and his only tie to his real home. A guy like Steve, Sam wouldn't blame him for moving the world to bring his friend home.

"I just…" Steve looked up, eyes so bleary from lack of sleep that he couldn't quite see straight. "I just want to understand. He remembered. I saw it in his eyes. He remembered me. So why is he running from me? Why is he going to…" Steve waved his hand at the map. The map sat on the table in the corner, a permanent fixture of the room since SHIELD had fallen. "To these places. It doesn't make any sense."

They'd both been wondering that. Sam eyed the offending paper suspiciously. It was massive, covering the entire length of the dining table in the Avengers' apartment. Even from the other side of the room, Sam could see every detail, not that he needed the reminder. Steve and Sam had spent hours upon hours pouring over the damn thing trying to find some rhyme or reason to it but getting absolutely nowhere. The map was peppered in tiny little x's: a few each in America, Russia, Europe, one each in Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Egypt. They knew exactly where he'd been, but they had no idea why and no idea where he was going.

"I don't know Steve," Sam sighed and slumped back. "Maybe he's… going back to what he remembers, or maybe looking for something." Neither was a new idea; Sam was really only trying to fill the air. They'd discussed both possibilities before. They discussed every possibility before, and none seemed to fit.

The Hydra files Natasha had leaked gave a detailed timeline of the Winter Soldier's activities, even though they weren't always documented by name. The Soldier had been making and changing history since Steve had gone under the ice. Assassinations, saves, fires, rebellions. He seemed to have a hand in everything that had led up to this moment, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. He had shaped the decades Steve had missed and made the world he saw today.

The x's on the map weren't his missions. There were seemingly too many of those to count. Stark had made a list and tried to show it to Steve, tried to make him see the soldier he was hunting rather than the old friend he wanted to find. Steve was having none of it. Every time someone brought up what the Winter Soldier had done, Steve had walked away. His friend wouldn't do those things, and when he first laid eyes on the Winter Soldier he hadn't seen his friend. He did eventually though. As the Helicarrier fell, he finally saw Bucky, and he was determined to see him again. He only wanted to find him, his last piece of home. He had no interest in the Winter Soldier, no interest in Hydra's ultimate weapon. He had no interest in what the Winter Soldier had done, and he wasn't going to subject himself to thinking about it.

The x's were sightings. All around the world people claimed to see the Winter Soldier, and Steve exhausted himself investigating every last one. A week after the collapse of SHIELD there had been nearly fifty, and eventually he'd managed to confirm four.

He hadn't been sure at first, but when he saw the fifth one he knew what was happening. Four empty Hydra bases, abandoned sometime before SHIELD but Steve couldn't be sure when, and each of them had been trashed. The first was a storage facility, hard copies of documents that were too sensitive to be committed to digital memory. Every drawer had been opened, every file torn apart, every desk ransacked. The second was a recruiting office in a similar state followed by two armories, but the fifth was the worst.

The fifth sighting was what led Steve to confirm the previous four. It had taken him deep into the mountains in Russia. A fully active Hydra lab. Its location was buried deep in the lists Nat had published, but no government had gotten around to checking it out until Steve heard whispers the Soldier had been there. Steve and Sam hopped on one of Tony's jets that night, but by the time they got there he was gone. Everything was gone.

For some reason, the place was entirely destroyed. The site was still smoldering when they arrived; anything that hadn't been personally destroyed had been engulfed in flames. There weren't even remnants of a clue as to what was going on in that building. The charred desks stood ajar. File cabinets were all empty. Every liquid, compound, and vile in the facility had been smashed on the floor and evaporated in the heat. What few computers remained had all had their memory stolen. All the lab's complex machinery was broken down to its most basic parts; nuts and bolts and bits of metal that even Tony Stark couldn't piece together as anything worth destroying.

All that was left to remember it were four bodies scattered outside. They were presumed to be the scientists manning the facility, but there was nothing to identify them by. Their prints were all scared or removed. Their teeth knocked in. Their bodies left to the elements, the snow and wind and animals, so long that their faces were unrecognizable. DNA had been the only hope, and nothing had come close to a match. Whoever they were, they were ghosts, and someone wanted to make sure they stayed that way.

It was then that Steve had realized it was Bucky, or at least the Winter Soldier with whatever was left of his friend. While Steve was on a mission to find him, he was on a mission of his own. To do what? For who? Why? Steve didn't know, but Bucky wasn't just hitting random Hydra facilities. He was up to something, and he didn't want anyone, Shield or Hydra or the Avengers, to know what it was.

Six more sightings followed mirroring the first four, and Steve and Sam were forced to resign themselves to collecting whatever was salvageable to bring back to New York for analysis. Stark had helped, but even then they'd found nothing. Whatever his mission was, Bucky had done a good job of hiding it. Sam and Steve had no idea what to do or where to go.

"Well, well, well, my fine feathered friend," Steve and Sam jolted up as Tony Stark came sauntering into the Avengers' apartments. He was flanked by Natasha and Bruce, who both looked just as unamused as Steve felt. "Close but no cigar."

"You have something?" Sam said it in a tone he only hoped would convey how much he really was not in the mood for the billionaire's usual attitude. He'd just spent the last 36 hours helping Steve loot through an abandoned science lab in the Czech Republic, and all they'd turned up were paper copies of drug inventories and a broken computer. Sam wanted a nap… a twelve-hour nap… and some food.

"Not something," Tony pointed out, whipping out the folder behind his back and waving it like he'd won some kind of prize, "Someone."

"Pardon?" Steve half-heartedly prompted.

The three newcomers wandered over to join them, and Tony dropped the folder in Sam's lap as he passed. "He's not looking for something. He's looking for someone."

"How do you know this?" That finally got the Captain sitting up a little straighter in his seat.

"Never," Tony poked at him, "tell me I can't fix something."

Sam flipped open the folder in his lap and started scanning the title page. "You got this off that old piece of junk we brought in today?"

"Yep," Tony responded smugly. "Just took a little digging. It wasn't actually in that bad of shape. Your best buddy took great care to wipe it of all the important things, but it just made it pretty obvious what I needed to be looking for when I opened it up."

"So he's after someone then," Steve mused and concentrated thinking. "An old Hydra agent? One of their scientists?"

Sam blanched as he turned the page in the file. "Oh, he's not after just anyone…" He set the file down and slid it across to Steve. "And she's definitely not a Hydra agent."

Steve bent down to pick up the file, but before his fingers could even scoop it up his eyes caught the picture in the corner.

Why did the room suddenly get so hot? Was it just him? His hand hung limp an inch above the paper, and it was shaking uncontrollably fast. There was a burning feeling in his chest, and he could practically feel his body rushing with sudden adrenaline.

In the distance, barely registering at the back of Steve's consciousness, he heard Tony asking Sam. "You know her?"

No, he wanted to say, but he couldn't form the word. Sam didn't know her. Steve had thought he never would. She was a world away, a lifetime away.

With trembling fingers, Steve reached into the pocket of his jacket for the picture he carried with him at all times. It was black and white and 70 years old, but Steve remembered every colorful detail like it was yesterday. It was the happiest day of Steve's life.

In the left of the frame was Bucky, the old Bucky. Before the Winter Soldier, before the metal arm, before Hydra, before the war. He was the Bucky girls would throw themselves on their knees in front of begging for a dance. He was the Bucky guys looked on with envy as he raised his fist and bounced around the boxing ring in triumph. Everyone loved Bucky; everyone wanted to be Bucky. Even in the photo, he was cracking everyone up with another joke. The smile on his face back then could light up any room he walked into. He looked happy, healthy. He was the Bucky Steve remembered.

To the right was Steve, pre-serum Steve. He looked like a different person; he'd felt like a different person. He was short and very thin. He looked sickly and pale, but he was laughing, Bucky's doing. Girls didn't fawn over him back then the way they had with Bucky, or Steve after. Guys didn't give him a second glance except to try to beat him into submission. That Steve only had one friend, and yet it was as content as Steve ever remembered being. He had everything he'd ever wanted and needed. He was happy.

There, in the middle, between Bucky and Steve was a girl. She was about the same height as Steve. Her hair fell loose around her face in long curls that he remembered to be blonde. Her arms were thrown haphazardly around both boys, and the photo was taken with her mouth smiling wide at Bucky's joke. Her eyes squinted with humor, but Steve could still see the bright twinkle behind her lashes. She was beautiful, more beautiful than the girls who fell at Bucky's feet or threw a cold shoulder Steve's direction. She was a true diamond in the rough. People flocked to her like moths to a flame. It was as much her heart and her spirit as her looks. She was the purest, kindest soul Steve had met in any generation. When she walked into a room, people turned. Her presence demanded attention, respect. People often questioned if even Bucky, with all his looks and charm and talents, was worthy of a girl like her.

"Who is she then?" Tony asked Sam.

Steve dropped the picture from his hand down next to the one in the file and slid it back to Stark. "He's looking for my sister."

That night was the fifth time Steve Rogers cried.